Thirsty
by It'sTimeToDance
Summary: How I would have preferred Bella's transformation. Three shot.
1. Chapter 1

**Thirsty**

**Part I: Too Far Gone**

_"My eyes closed, and I drifted."_

It didn't seem like long before the sensation overcame the grogginess, becoming a rising inferno expanding throughout my veins, burning my nerve endings and retracting my muscles.. I jerked, and a scream ripped through my throat.

Fire coursed through my limbs at such a rapid rate I couldn't remember where it began and where it ended. My fingers locked into a fist, my fingernails digging into my skin so deep blood trickled through my knuckles. My eyes fluttered open, releasing a stream of tears down my cheeks, dripping through my lips as I cried. I was dying.

It was the only logical explanation. No one could live through this, this agony. No one could survive this. I twisted against a hard surface, my wrist thumping against wooden floors, wet with blood. This wasn't something people came back from. This was not tolerable. I was dying. I was dying. Dying. Dying. _Dying. Please, let me die._

My lungs burned for air as I screamed, and the sound of a creature growling and moaning was like a thick, heavy whisper breathing in my ears. It seemed too shriek in agony, and the sound of flames bursting to life echoed against the walls. More voices, angelic and lyrical, seemed to glide through the chaotic tremors.

"Oh no, Bella, no!"

I jerked at the sudden anguish in his voice, and a fresh wave of flames tore through my skin like acid. I writhed under it's hold, screaming in agony.

"He bit her! _He bit her!"_

Let me die. Please, God, let me _die._

"It's too much. We have to stop the bleeding."

"The venom, Carlisle! _She's changing!"_

I cried out. The fire. _The fire!_

"...she's too far gone, Edward. I wouldn't be able to get it out of her system without draining her."

I screamed again, desperately preying for the blaze to stop. Cool, strong hands pressed themselves against my arms, pinning me to the wooden floor.

"You have too, Carlisle! You have too!"

The voice, the calm, even one, seemed torn, "I...can't, Edward. I'm sorry."

"_Edward!" _I shrieked, arching my back and writhing under their icy grip. Tears burned at my lash line, and seemed to sizzle atop my burning skin.

His voice, like a perfectly white cloud in the center of a tornado, whispered in such anguish that my heart thudded all the faster, "Bella...I'm sorry. I'm..._so _sorry."

My heart was like a basketball, pounding against my chest so hard I thought I would burst. It simmered as though it were being boiled in hot water and, as the voices argued and conversed, I felt myself slipping away, into the depths of what could only be hell. The voices drifted into whispers, soon dying out, leaving me to the sound of my own heart racing.

**Author's Note: **The rest of this is finished. If you want more, review and I'll post the other two chapters.


	2. Chapter 2

**thirsty**

**part II: new eyes**

_"Cause every breath I breathe_

_Oh, how it's killing me."_

-"Narcissus", Yellow Taxicab

The fire grew softer, as though I were in an oven and someone was turning down the heat. I could hear again.

_"Any minute now. It's been three days."_

Carlisle, I realized. Beside me. I could smell the antiseptic hanging on his clothes.

_"How will she handle it?" _A soft, beautiful voice, like ice against my burning skin. _"She had no warning. She'll be confused."_

Please, I wanted to say. Make it stop.

Three days...it meant something. The number, the fire, they went together somehow. I can't remember. It's like I'm being boiled in hot water.

Any minute, he said. It would be over.

--

When I awoke, everything was _clear._

It was like my entire life--every second--was lived through a veil, pressing my eyes against a transparent fabric and trying to see things for what they were. Every memory was as dull as such, every smell and image like flash frames of a long forgotten movie seen as a child. I smelled everything, the leather of the couch and the softener of the bed sheets. It hit me in a wave of scents, mixing together into a somewhat pleasent explosion of senses. I tensed under it--the sudden awareness--and felt my breath catch...

My _breath?_

It felt so..._useless. _Unnecessary. Empty, whistling taking of oxygen that was better suited elsewhere. I tried to stop.

Suddenly, the smells and colors disappeared, as though someone had slammed them back where they came from. My lungs did not burn, needing air. It was uncomfortable.

I breathed again.

"Bella?" Edward's cool, heavy voice whispered. I dared myself--_forced _myself--to open my eyelids, take in the overwhelming onslaught of obscene ticks, sights. Color. More then I thought existed. I felt like I should have gone insane, that no mind could process this many details and remain unscathed.

"Bella." His voice was like a sigh. Like he'd spent years carrying a mountain on his back and had just let it drop back onto the earth. Relief.

Words bubbled at my throat. Words that made no sense to me, but _so much sense _at the same time. Words foreign, that I couldn't wrap my tongue around, too swift and emotional to even comprehend. I could only gasp with a swift of cold, stale air.

I blinked. Again. And again.

"I know it's...different," he said. He was close, and I could feel his tension, his muscles constricting, as though waiting for some kind of outburst.

All I could say was, "What?"

More people, more voices. I could feel the hair on their arms and the swish of their breath. Leaning in, watching. Cullens.

"What...am...I?"

It sounded choked and foreign and confused, to my own hears, hissed between clenched teeth as a horrible burning invaded my throat like acid. It was all I could think of. Surely, I was not myself, not _human. _Humans breathed. Humans could feel their own heart beating against their chest. Humans could not see this much or hear this much or _feel _this much. This bitter cold that surrounded me. I was dead. Dead and alive at the same time.

It registered, before Edward or anyone else could say a thing. Dead. Alive. Living. Livingdead.

Vampire.

My scream was deafening.

--

"Why?"

His chest pressed into my cheek, his now warm, soft hand rubbing circles in my back. I wanted to cry, wanted to feel the salty satisfaction of tears running down my cheeks. I wanted to cough and hiccup and sputter like I did when I was younger. I wanted to pound my fist into the walls without sending the entire foundation into a heap on the ground. I wanted to feel the desperate intensity of empty lungs. I wanted my heart to beat like a raquet ball.

Instead, I got dry, unfocused eyes.

Dry.

Like sandpaper.

"The venom was already in your veins, infecting your heart. Bella, we had no choice," Edward whispered, his breath tickling my cold skin.

"You should have killed me."

The same retraction, convulsion, of his muscles curved into Rosalie's shirt. They had, apparently, replaced my blood soaked blouse during the three day period and the cool, elegant cloth felt foreign, even on my new skin. New skin. Like I had shedded.

"Don't say that." Was that a crack in his voice? A break in the lyrical harmony that accompanied every syllable he uttered? Jesus. "Please, don't say that."

We sat in the ruins of his living room, me squatted in corner, forcing oxygen through my lungs even though it was so painfully unnecessary and him, holding me agianst his chest as though it could make it suddenly _go away_. His bronze hair touched my forehead like a babies fingers. If that kind of comparison was at all appropriate, that is.

"What should I say, then?" I croaked, my hideously smooth voice muffled in the cuff of his shirt.

I felt his dry swallow against the top of my head. "I'm sorry. I'm so..._so _sorry."

I knew what he meant. I just knew.

Thirsty, I thought, biting at my lip. I'm thirsty.

As though reading my mind, he whispered in my hair, "We should hunt."

--

Months past.

The Cullens placed their steps carefully, standing on their toes as though afraid of what other damage I could cause to their household possessions. I had, apparently, the strength of a newborn; where the human blood still clutched to my veins like parasites, pumping my muscles and giving me the strength of ten Emmetts. Which was cool, in a sick kind of way.

Edward showed me how to hunt, how to find the animal and beat it down and snap it's neck and break it's bones and drink it's blood. It's wonderful..._delicious _blood.

"I'm in mourning," I whispered to myself one night while I stared at the new ceiling of the room Carlisle had cleared out for me. "I'm grieving. In mourning. A human life lost."

That's what it _was, _wasn't it? Grieving. Mourning a life.

I don't know why I said this. It just sprang to mind.

I couldn't go back to school, and I was declared missing. The last sighting of me had been in the Ballet Studio, where they found abnormal amounts of blood. They sent out search party. I caught Alice and Jasper watching my face flash on the news, my father in uniform. Crying. At a press conference.

He _never _cries.

I think I broke a few chairs.

--

They wouldn't let me get too close to the road. Control, Bella, they said. It's hard to _control._

My resentment grew with every new restriction. Every mindful wall they placed, every leash they tied around my neck. My tension grew. I missed Renee and Charlie and...fuck...even _Mike. _I hated this house, I decided. I hated the cleanclean_clean _floors and the spotless furniture and how no matter how much mud Emmett dragged in the rugs seemed to absorb it and _God this house!_

One day--or night, I can't remember--I tested myself. Didn't hunt, just smashed rocks in my palm and dented the Volvo with my pinky nail and dry sobbed at how I very clearly wasn't human. Edward came in, stared, stepped foreword, stepped back, shuffled on his heels and sat down. Watching, waiting.

"Can I see Charlie?" I asked, denting his passenger door with my thumb.

The noise he made was something like a cough, and he wisely kept his distance. "I..." he said quietly. "I...don't think that would be safe. For Charlie. Your still young, we don't know how much...control you have."

"He thinks I'm dead." My voice was horribly broken, like burnt wood being crunched under a hiking boot.

I didn't look at him, but I could imagine his eyes sparkling with _pity a_nd _anguish _and whatever else he felt for me. I knew what he would say, but still I pushed and prodded him like a child the weekend before Christmas.

"Maybe..." he said, "next year, after you've made it past the tentative months..."

I stood up and started towards the back door, to the woods. My throat burned. "I'll hunt."

I leaped from the door and ran off into the darkness of the forest.

--

Days turned to weeks and weeks to months and soon it was a year and I should be eighteen.

Charlie came, and that was when I lost it.

I was wedged between Edward and the edge of the sofa, staring at the television without interest, waiting for the sun to set.

Carlisle had been talking about moving to Alaska for a while, get me away from this _town city state _and I felt the need to object but I couldn't, wouldn't. I was tired but I couldn't sleep and _goddamnit _I was hungry.

The doorbell rang, Carlisle answered it.

Muffled voices, should be indistiguisable, but I heard every word.

_Charlie, how are you?_

_Fine, just fine. Have you gotten any word on Bella? _

Pause.

I heard the _tapping _of his boots--so familiar--and a sudden scent carried itself through the air, swarming me, suffocating me.

_God._

Edward felt it too, gripping me by the shoulder and gesturing to Jasper--sitting at the coffee table with a thick volume. Edward had taught me to resist, to stop breathing and move as far away as possible.

I tried, but it smelled s_o damn good._

"Edward..." I squeaked, ripping my fingers into his hand and mindlessly struggling against him.

"Emmett," he hissed quitely. "Emmett, get down here."

I was to my feet now, pushing, resisting Jasper's waves of sickening calm.

_Hungry I'm hungry so hungry oh God_

If my mouth could water, it would.

I was now dragging my feet into the floor, struggling with the ferocity of a rabid animal. Horrible, savage screeches ripped through my throat and _so hungry so hungry so hungry._

This smell wasn't my father, it was food and I was starving and it was there and it s_melled so good._

_"Argh!" _I screamed, sending my fist flying behind me, feeling the sickening impact of my knuckle with Edward's cheek. He remained unmoved, didn't even flinch, dug his heels into the floor, called for Emmett again. Stop it, Jasper, with the goddamn _calm. _I'm hungry, so hungry, so hungry.

Thirsty, hungry, _food._

I saw him, now. Those cartoons, you know, where the characters are so hungry they see their friends as steaks and chickens and try to eat them? It was like that. Except he still looked like Charlie. Except that the last time I saw him, he was not something I would eat and now he was and--

_Christ._

I did a Superwomen dive from Edward's grasp and only Carlisle's stone-like body was keeping me from ripping his throat out. Something, a small part of my brain begged and pleaded with me _he's your father he's your father he's your father _but I couldn't listen couldn't stop couldn't coudn't coudn't.

Charlie's eyes were saucers, tinged red, his face pale and taut, a shade of yellow from too much junk food. A vein throbbed temptingly on his throat and I growled and hissed like a jungle cat. Carlisle was screaming, Charlie was screaming, Edward Emmett Jasper screaming and _I was thirsty._

"Bella? Is that _Bella?" _he cried, fear and relief and more and more fear breaking his voice into thousands of pieces. I couldn't see anymore, couldn't hear or feel only smell, smell this wonderful, beautiful smell and _I'm so thirsty, so thirsty._

"Charlie, _go!" _Carlisle shouted, the loudest his voice has ever been and he did. My father left with his sweet smell, running to his truck and I could smell his tears, salty, the taste of heartbreak. The taste of fear.

Finally, once the smell was gone and the air was still and I finally succumbed to Jasper's waves of silence, I fell to the floor, Edward and Carlisle still half holding my arms and sobbed.

Alice was here now, Esme and Rosalie. All crowding me, watching me with the same aching sadness in their eyes. My fault, these looks in their eyes. Hurting everyone, everyone because I'm s_o hungry _and I'm weak. Frail and week and a monster a horrible monster _oh God oh God._

"Bella," Edward whispered, crouching down to whisper to me. "It's okay, it's fine. You didn't hurt him, you didn't hurt anybody. Every things fine."

"No, no, no, _no!" _Screeching and thrashing like a five year old.

I wanted to e_at _my own _father. _

--im a monster im a monster im a monster--

I was on my feet, stronger then Edward or Emmett or any of the Cullens and running out the door, wishing desperately for tears to come, to verify I still had a soul. I didn't, though, so my cheeks remained dry and, no matter how much I ran, I couldn't run out of breath.

The sun set finally over Forks, Washington, and I left it behind my heels.


	3. Chapter 3

--the end of it--

_"I never saw it coming"_-Paramore

I pressed myself against the tree, digging my cold, stoney forehead into my hands. My teeth grounded together, creating a sound similar to two rocks colliding. My hair--my disgustingly perfect, beautiful hair--created a veil, blocking the all to vivid world around me.

I don't know where I was. California?

My throat burned, and my muscles convulsed like small snakes under my skin. I breathed heavily, counting each to take my mind off the fact that the breaths were completely _unnecessary._

I was not human. I was not human. _I was not human._

My thoughts shifted, displaying a grainy, hardly legible flashback from my childhood. I laughed as my new bike rolled down the hill, my grip tight against the handlebars--so much so the white of my knuckles shone through.

The front wheel skidded against a twig, and I went flying foreword. As I landed, my knee stabbed itself into a pointed, jagged rock, and blood oozed down my knee.

If it could, my mouth would water.

_No, _a voice whispered, _don't think about it._

I let myself choke mid-breath, the unnatural indifference my lungs felt only adding to the isolation. In a situation such as this, at any other time, I would have heard my heart pounding against my chest and the blood running through my ears. I heard none of it, though. Only the trees rustling and the footsteps--

_Footsteps._

A sudden wave of sweet aroma assaulted my nose like a rock slide, crushing me into the tree bark and sending me into a hungered craze, my muscles tensing into knots and my throat sizzling at the beck of my neck.

Men's laughter reached my ears, joking and chuckling at private jokes shared. I gripped the tree bark so hard my fingers left ten inch indents in the surface. The wind blew it--the wonderful smell--harder and faster, too the point where I felt like I could pass out.

"Hey," a voice said. "It's a girl."

_No, _I silently begged, not trusting my own voice. _Don't come near me._

"Hey, you okay?"

My ears picked up the sound of their feet rustling, louder and louder until they were like bullhorns, pressing me farther into the tree. My nose twitched, and my throat ached. I tried to cut off the breathing, the hissing, the intake of this scent...

Impossible.

"I think she's hurt," said another voice.

"Should we call someone?"

No. _No._

A hand moved towards me, touching my shoulder, "Dude, she's ice cold."

It smelled...so..._good._

They all got closer...and closer...

I let out a sound like a lion being stabbed, jerking away from them so quickly they jumped.

"Hey," one said. "We're not goin' to hurt you."

_That's not what I'm worried about, _I thought.

So sweet. The sweetest thing I've ever smelled. Like flowers, and Spring, and everything else that I could imagine. I couldn't think. I couldn't remember anything. Charlie, Renee, Edward...they all disappeared behind the veil of hunger and longing. It was all gone, and I could see. My senses dispersed. I couldn't feel, or hear, or talk. Just smell that sweet, beautiful smell...

"Hey," his wrist, his _veins, _lay right in front of me, my nose, my mouth...

_No._

"You okay?"

God.

I am

so

thirsty.

**A/N Okay, posted to get it over with. This chapter's been sitting around for months.**


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